Telecom
Telecom Operators’ Call Centres and Subscribers’ Issues
The adoption of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) model by Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) in the management of their call centres has helped to a large extent in easing difficulties subscribers faces in accessing call centres.
Before the adoption of outsourcing model in the call centre operations, subscribers who have issues with their service hardly speak to humans for resolving such issues rather they where meant to follow interactive voice response system, in most cases does not resolve such issues.
But, with outsourcing, the chances of subscribers that put call to call centres to speak with humans have increased.
However, the greatest challenge facing outsourcing of call centres to the ‘so’ called experts is training.
Most of the attendants at almost all the GSM operators call centres are not knowledgeable in the products and services offered by the operators.
There have been situations where different attendants offer different explanations to a particular issue of a subscriber.
What this suggests is that the attendants are not properly trained in the products and services of operators they represent, rather emphases are concentrated on politeness of attendants to subscribers calling the centres as against training on services of the operator they interface with their subscribers.
Recently, this writer had issue with the service of transferring airtime to a subscriber which was not delivered while the airtime was deducted.
However, the writer put several calls to the call centre of the operators all the three attendants he spoke with could not offer explanation on what happened and how to revert the airtime that was deducted.
A call centre is operated by a company to administer incoming product support or information inquiries from telemarketing, clientele, product services, and debt collection are also made.
In addition to a call centre, collective handling of letters, faxes, live chat, and e-mail at one location is known as a contact centre.
A call centre is often operated through an extensive open workspace for call centre agents, with work stations that include a computer for each agent, a telephone set/headset connected to a telecom switch, and one more supervisor stations.
It can be independently operated or network with additional centres, often linked to a corporate computer network, including mainframes, microcomputers and LANs.
What this means is that a telephone or internet service provider that is based in Lagos with its major transmission equipment installed in Lagos can give service to a location such as Abuja or Uyo by simply installing another transmission equipment and trans-receiver station that will transmit calls from the sundry location to the major switch at Lagos.
Subscribers to the service in Abuja or Uyo as the case may be will enjoy the service without having to see the people rendering the service but agents not directly employed by the service provider as well as their equipment.
The question that arises is how can this subscriber reach out to the service provider when he or she has issues with the service? Such issues as recharging of phones, where recharge card numbers have been scratched off, SIM card issues among others.
These issues are addressed through contact to the service providers’ call centre located mostly at major towns or at the operational base of the operator depending on the coverage of the operator as well as the technology in use especially for internet service providers.
Subscribers of GSM networks in the country in the past 10 years have not had it smooth reaching call centres of their network to address issues.
There has been tells of woes as subscribers often time spend 60 minutes waiting to talk to call centre agent while others don’t ever talk to human beings but machine in the name Interactive Voice Response (IVR).
Interactive voice response (IVR), is a technology that allows a computer to detect voice and keypad to detect voice and keypad inputs, IVR technology is used extensively in telecommunications, but is also being introduced into Automobile system for handsfree operation. IVR System can respond with pre-recorded or dynamically generated audio to further direct users on how to proceed.
IVR systems can be used to control almost any function where the interface can be broken down into a series of simple menu choices.
In telecommunications IVR systems generally scale well to handle large call volumes.
More so, the claim by operators that their call centre service is 24 hours has been found deceitful as none of the operators’ call centres could be reached between 8pm and 7am.
Efforts by Operators
As the industry gets matured operators have begun to adopt different strategies to manage their call centres for effective service delivery. MTN has expanded its call centres to accommodate large number of agents to be able to attend to many subscribers at the same time. The telecommunications giant has also refocused its management by outsourcing it to a more competent company for the management of its call centres for an improved service delivery.
Airtel on its part having identified call centre outsourcing as the way forward to addressing the inefficiency of management of its call centres have signed an agreement with Spanco to operate and manage its call centres.
Kapil Puri, Chairman & Managing Director, Spanco, said: “Bharti Airtel was the pioneer of adopting the BPO model across all its areas of operations in India. The experience and success that it achieved created a whole new sector in the country that is now regarded as the global centre of excellence for outsourcing.
Currently over 4,000 people are employed in Africa supporting Bharti Airtel’s customer service operations. Going forward the number of people employed in managing Bharti Airtel’s customer service functions will increase as Bharti Airtel expands its network and customer base.
It is the expectations of subscribers that as these initiatives and more take root, operators should intensify effort on training their call centres attendants on the products and services the offer for better understanding as well as improvement in their ability to resolving issues.
Users of satellite internet service provider Starlink in Nigeria are being required to complete a biometric Know Your Customer (KYC) process as a precondition to continue enjoying their services, according to .biometricupdate.
According to local reports, more than 66,000 Starlink subscribers in the country had a December 31 ultimatum from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to complete the biometric verification or have their connection discontinued.
The process essentially entails linking a Starlkink account with the subscriber’s national digital ID.
The NCC, which is Nigeria’s telecoms industry regulator, is said to have first issued the directive in August last year, setting a three-month deadline which was to elapse on November 19, TechCabal reports.
The body however later extended it to December 31 after consultations with industry stakeholders. The internet account-NIN linkage, the NCC said, is to enhance identity verification and strengthen security within the country’s telecoms space.
Just a few days to the December 31 deadline, Starlink’s Nigeria office sent an email to its subscribers reminding them of the KYC requirement, and warned that all those who fail to comply would be disconnected.
And that once disconnected, reconnection would depend on network capacity in the concerned area.
The service provider said in its email that the process takes less than two minutes and users can complete it by logging in to their account via an app.
One user, quoted by TechCabal, said one needs to upload their selfie biometrics, provide their national identification number (NIN) and then give their consent for the account to be linked to their ID information.
Starlink’s internet service is present in about 155 countries with nine million users, as of 2025. Its growth in Nigeria is said to be rapid, making it the second largest internet service provider in the country, according to The Traffic.
Biometric identification for Starlink subscribers could become a continent-wide trend given that some countries have expressed reservations in opening up their internet space to the company over security concerns.
There’ve been fears that jihadists in countries like Mali and Nigeria may have exploited Starlink terminals to coordinate terror operations, and cybersecurity experts have also warned of risks related to weak regulation, digital sovereignty and data breaches.
The requirement for Starlink internet users to have their accounts linked with the NIN is similar to the SIM-NIN linkage policy which the Nigerian government battled to implement for many years, with many deadline extensions.
In October last year, the NCC, which is was at the forefront of the policy implementation, announced that all active SIM cards across all network providers had complied with the directive which was issued in 2020.
The idea, the federal government argued, was to strengthen security and curb criminality such as kidnappings which are aided and abetted by improperly identified mobile phone numbers.
Mr. Kashifu Inuwa, Director General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), has urged Northern Nigeria to pivot urgently from traditional commerce to an innovation-driven digital economy for sustainable growth.
NITDA
Inuwa issued the call at the Future Map Foundation Roundtable 1.0 (North-West Edition) in Kano, attributing the region’s sluggish digital adoption not to talent deficits but to the lack of deliberate, coordinated strategies.
He stressed deeper collaboration across academia, private sector players, entrepreneurs, and government, positioning the private sector as the primary innovation engine while government supplies robust policies and an enabling ecosystem.
Inuwa advocated for people-focused, locally tailored innovations that tackle regional challenges head-on, enabling global competitiveness by transitioning from mere technology users to creators of homegrown solutions.
The roundtable convened policymakers, tech founders, and ecosystem stakeholders to forge a comprehensive roadmap for North-West digital transformation, yielding firm commitments to bolster regional innovation policies and public-private synergies.
Inuwa’s push dovetails seamlessly with the Federal Government’s Renewed Hope Agenda, which sets an ambitious target of 95 per cent nationwide digital literacy by 2030, fostering inclusive economic empowerment.
Participants hailed the forum as a pivotal step toward unlocking Northern Nigeria’s tech potential, with NITDA poised to lead implementation through strategic interventions and partnerships.
Samsung Electronics plans to double this year the number of its mobile devices with “Galaxy AI” features largely powered by Google’s Gemini, its co-CEO said, which would give the U.S. firm an edge over rivals as the global race in artificial intelligence heats up.
The South Korean company, which had rolled out Gemini-backed AI features to about 400 million mobile products, including smartphones and tablets, by last year, plans to boost that figure to 800 million in 2026.
“We will apply AI to all products, all functions, and all services as quickly as possible,” T M Roh told Reuters in his first interview since becoming Samsung Electronics co-CEO in November.
The plan by the world’s largest backer of Google’s Android mobile platform is set to give a major boost to its developer Google, which is locked in a race with OpenAI and others to attract more consumer users to their AI model.
Samsung seeks to reclaim its lost crown from Apple in the smartphone market and fend off competition from Chinese rivals not only in mobile telephones, but televisions and home appliances, all overseen by Roh.
It will offer integrated AI services across consumer products to widen its lead over Apple in such features, though the latter was set to be the top smartphone maker last year, according to market researcher Counterpoint.
AI Race
Alphabet’s Google launched the latest version of Gemini in November, highlighting Gemini 3’s lead on several popular industry measures of AI model performance.
In response to Gemini 3, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reportedly issued an internal “code red,” pausing non-core projects and redirecting teams to accelerate development. The ChatGPT maker launched its GPT-5.2 AI model a few weeks later.
Roh expects the adoption of AI to accelerate, as Samsung’s surveys on awareness of its Galaxy AI brand jumped to a level of 80% from about 30% in just one year.
“Even though the AI technology might seem a bit doubtful right now, within six months to a year, these technologies will become more widespread,” he said.
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